The Canopy Bow (and Accelerometer)

always get asked the question why don't you put a canopy frame on it because i'm using short throw projectors if i do put a canopy frame on it it will cast a shadow on the screen which would look terrible [Music] [Music] g'day everyone welcome back to the channel today's video we're going to be talking about the canopy bow and the accelerometer for those that are new here this is my homemade a10c warthog flight simulator 99 of this i built myself if you'd like to know how i did it please have a look in the description below at the link to my website thewarthogproject.com or take a look around the youtube channel there's a whole bunch of info let's get into it okay so we'll start with the parts you really need to buy to get this thing working um you need a single switch for the reset button got off ebay i'll try and find the link for you but it's a decent quality one and it also has the cap there is removable so i can 3d print a more accurate replacement just to press fit on there so one switch servos so i use these cheap tower pro sg90s there's three of them uh my previous gauge i used a stepper motor one of these x27168s they make a version of this that i also bought that's actually a dual one you can see it's just two of them stepped up and it's dual concentric but the g meter needs three needles all on the same axis so i decided against using these and i decided to just use servos so i use servos and then geared them all on the same axis that will become apparent when i show you later three of those all up you need an arduino to run it this is a nano we all know what that is by now this is actually a 3d printed piece that i use to hold the nanos i've taken to using this it just press fits in there uh this is not my design i'll link to it on thingiverse down below and you need some pcb i use this pcb here cheap from china but i like it because it's got long continuous lines so it makes this sort of pcb perfect for sharing power which is what i use it for again that will become more apparent in a second so now we'll just jump onto the desktop and i will show you the design of the whole thing okay so here we are in coreldraw this is the basic design of the gauge this one here is clear it's the glass on the front there's a 3d printed spacer in there which i'll show you later then here is the faceplate that's going to be painted black and then all the red engraved on it the needles i designed in coral draw but i i was going to laser cut them but i ended up 3d printing them because i can 3d print them to be 0.1 of a millimeter thick whereas i'm sort of if i laser cut them they would have had to be one millimeter thick so i want them as thin as possible and then this is the stack that holds all of the parts in behind the gauge so you can see these four bolts on the face there that's the stack that holds it all together uh that's that one there holds the led strip that back lights this this one here holds two servos side by side you can see there's a notch in that that notch is so that it will fit in the case and past the bolts that hold it to the top bracket it'll make sense in a second when i'll show you and then this one here holds the third servo a little bit behind that one and then that's the rear base plate that the arduino nano holder will bolt onto you can see they've got holes cut in all of them so i can pass cables through easily so that's the laser cut sections of this that hold the gauge proper and then i'll show you the 3d printed parts okay so here we are in three card pretty self-explanatory this is the three needles you can see how large a hole middle hole and small hole that's so all the brass rod shafts fit in on the same axis one of these two are hollow and then that one's solid it'll make sense in a second when i'll show you there is a bezel as well this bezel right here just acts as a spacer so it sits between the glass and the face plate just to provide a spacer there where these needles can sit in see on the back here there's cutouts for these bolts that hold the whole stack of the gauge together there is also a button so this button here is designed to fit over that push button i showed you it's a bit larger and more realistic and it fits through these spaces so you can reach the button next up we have the body so this body is the exact same dimensions as the compass in my last video slight differences being that there's four bolts on the back now to hold it together see on the front here there's only three bolts holding it together because on this lower section here there's actually the push button for the reset there's also a bezel on the front there that bezel is just for looks in line i'm pretty sure in the real jet it's um a lighting thing it's got lights in it to shine down on the gauges but mine's just solid and it's only there for looks and on the rear there is a large cover four bolts hold it on there's a hole in the top there for the usb and then there's a hole in the back here for the power cable all right so what we'll do now is i'll um take you back out into the garage and we'll have a look how this thing goes together so first thing are the needles you can see that they are really really thin 3d prints i did it out of white and then i painted this bit black and left that white however i realized later on that it was too clear because the backlight of that shined through it and you couldn't actually see what was pointed so i just stuck a bit of white sticker sheet on it to make that solid so the light doesn't go through it so there's three of them they're super super thin and they just press fit onto the gears here these are off cuts of the brass rods that i use for the shafts you can see that they sort of fit perfectly in each other with a bit of lubricant in there they're super smooth um and then there is a third one in the middle there so that's how i've got them all working off the same axis and then these are ones here that have the gears on them you can see that they're just little gears that are press fit on there so i drilled the holes and then they sort of tap in there with a hammer so here's the compass disassembled what i'll do now is sort of assemble it so you can see how it goes to slide in each other like that the one on the inside is longer so that the the bottom needle is pressed fit onto this shaft the middle needle is pressed fit onto that shaft and then the top needle is just glued on top of the center one that will go in the middle of them i buy the kits of these servos that have that come with gears so i've got a massive collection of different sizes and i just sort of mixed and matched i didn't use any specific gear ratios or anything like that i just picked ones that fit and because i can adjust it all in the software all right so the next thing along is the faceplate itself there's two millimeter thick acrylic uh painted black and then engraved you can see that that button there for the reset switches in there and that's just some dupont connectors where it goes down to the arduino uh so these screws here attach motherboard standoffs you can see how the back of this is not painted so the light will get through it and illuminate that next thing along is this so this is just a spacer that has led strip green on it and then that's what backlights this gauge so you can see how it will line up like that and then i use these motherboard standoffs that have a male end and a female end to mount it all together so you just screw these in and then when you put 12 volt backlight into that that whole thing will illuminate green uh next part along is the servo holder so this all right so there's two servos mounted to this you can see that it's spaced out one of them so they don't collide with each other because the shaft goes through the middle here and the gears will be at different levels so i needed to lower that one to get the gear below it so this one will go on here same thing it gets mounted using motherboard standoffs but first i'll put the needles in so i just grab that little assembly and it fits through that hole there and you can see how it will stick out the front here and then all i need to do is press fit these on i'm sorry let's press fit on there and then the middle one also needs to be press fit in like that so there's a bit of wobble here you can see that so i've got a little spacer again it came with those kits that just will that will just rest on there and then this will go in like this so these servos are actually movable so you can slide them in and out to get them close or as far away from the um shaft as you can so you just move them out and then mount it on and then these get screwed on all right so you can see how the servos in there now line up with those ones and you just have to squeeze them in so they make contact they actually look like they're pretty good in there now all right so the next one along is the last needle the middle one that goes in the center again it's just a tower price servo you can see that there's spacers cut in there so it'll fit around those servos and there is a long shaft that's glued in there um that's sort of just press fit and then tacked in with a bit of epoxy but that fits through the middle and should come out at the end so this one here goes through the hole there just need to get it lined up oh yeah sorry i forgot one thing you have to pass the cables through first through those holes and then the same thing again so these ones are too stuck together just because i needed them to be a bit taller so you got that all right so that is all the servos mounted you can see now that there is a single shaft just sticking out the end there that shaft there is what this last needle will get sort of press fit and epoxy on it it does just press fit there pretty well now but i will chuck a little bit of epoxy in there when i get it together for the last time uh so the last part of it is just the rear cover that has the arduino nano mounted in it and also this little power distribution board that i made up this is really super simple all it is so i i just cut a section out of there and then i put pins along it so i can share the share the power so each of these servos needs direct 5 volt so you can't power these servos directly off this so there's a separate five volt power supply coming in to this and it attaches to this distribution board there's five volts power coming in to run the servos and there's 12 volts power coming in to run the backlight circuit i did that so it meshes with the rest of my cockpit if i was going to make it more compact i could probably make it all run off a single power supply but i i needed the 12 volt backlight because i want it running off the same console backlight panel in my cockpit uh so all i need to do now is organize all these cables up through this hole and they'll spin around onto that and it will be ready to go all right so here is the whole thing complete this one here is just a 12v backlighting i'll connect that up as the last thing i do before i put it in the cockpit um but you can see that it's it's pretty compact um i could make it a little bit shorter if i decided to remove these dupont connectors and just soldered it direct to the arduino but i decided against that all right so what we'll do now is get on the bench put it all together and see if it works all right so dcs is powered up i've just got five volts coming in to the servo and a usb cable connected to the computer so what i'll do now is i'll just um unpause dcs and we'll throw it around a bit and you'll see how it works okay so dcs is running dcs bios is running and it's all hooked up there's five volts going into the servos and there's a usb cable those are the only two connections so when i pull up now the g meter should move the same as the one you can see on the screen looks like it works pretty well some negative g's look it's not 100 accurate compared to the one in the game but it certainly does the job spin it around so you can see the servo's moving all right and then you can see when i level her out if i push the reset button okay so this is the case that holds the accelerometer you can see that it is very very similar to the compass one it's basically the same design just with some changes to the mounting hardware um first thing i need to do is bolt on the indexer this side is the angle of attack indexer again it shares the same arduino that's in the g-meter so that just goes on there and just like the compass there's a couple of holes here so i can pass a screwdriver and a screw through to get to that so i'll just screw that on all right so that goes on like that now the the whole sort of unit just slides in through the front you can see that there's notches in the bottom here of those two those notches are so that it'll clear the screws that mounted the indexer there's also a notch on the top here that notch is just so that this this um screw here doesn't fail on it so basically i'm just gonna slide that in making sure that no cables get stuck all right so that's how it mounts in there you can see the four screws so before those screws go in place you need to put the top cover on all right so the next piece that goes on is this 3d printed spacer you can see that it's got the cutouts for those screws so that just slides on the top after that comes the glass just a single piece of acrylic you can see that i've painted the outside of a black and thrown on the red vinyl markings that goes on like that and then after that comes this 3d printed bracket that goes on like that uh very long screws go through the whole thing to hold it in place so that's how it sort of bolts together so that's basically the whole thing after that goes on there's a 3d printed cap that goes on that button it's just paint it's just drying paint at the moment so i'll put that on when it gets in the aircraft these from the index get connected to that arduino and then the rear cover which is just a box really gets bolted on the back anyway let's um get it all finalized and get it in the cockpit all right so this is how it mounts to the cockpit you can see it's on a hanger that's off the canopy bow 3d printed bracket there and also this whole assembly here is 3d printed and painted up uh basically it's exactly the same mirrored on both sides uh the same bracket the same mount it's all the same just 3d printed the whole unit it's not the strongest thing in the world i reckon if i just hit it like that it would snap off at the mounting points down here but you just got to be careful this whole thing here solid timber all right so the canopy bar itself is just timber that's all it is structural timber that i've cut into sections and then bolted together you can see there's a join in the middle here that's so i can still separate the two side consoles so these whole side consoles slide out i'll show you that in a second and you can see that all i did was painted in the same paint that the side consoles got painted in and weathered it up imperfections rather than try to hide them i just put silver on them to make it look like it's chips and stuff so you can run a dry brush silver along the edge 35mm thick timber there 35mm thick timber there and there's mdf in the middle there which i inset in so you can see that there's three millimeter mdf which creates that gap to make it look like that's part that's the canopy and that's the front windscreen uh and then i i continued that line down with decals down here to make it look like it's the canopy it came out pretty well i think it certainly makes it feel a lot more like an a10 now when i'm sitting in it i get the reference points now for formation flying and also find i have to look around it like you would in the real jet to look for targets and stuff like that so all you need to do to slide them out is undo this connector here and now that now it's free there's also a power connector that power connector there is for the backlight on the accelerometer so i ran the power for the backlight from the lighting control panel uh up along the back of that to that and then i just shared it with that rather than having to run another line through the whole main instrument panel then through this console then up that side just to leave that bit clear i decided just to have a quick connector there to make life a little bit easier so if you disconnect that cable there it's just a quick plug you'll see that these pivot um so these are only bolted in here with screws so there's a there's a bolt in the middle there there's a thread on this end and there's a bolt in that end so you basically twist the whole thing to unscrew it i did that to make it easier to transport so if i ever need to disassemble this thing that section of the canopy bow comes off that section of the canopy bow comes off and then you can move them in and out of the doors easier without smashing into walls and that sort of thing uh you can see just here there is a another metal clip you just undo that and then that's what locks it in now it'll free it'll freely turn now i don't really want to do it because i don't want to pull it apart you can see that whole thing can twist and now that it's disconnected you can just slide this whole thing here with this handle and the whole thing comes apart and then to put it back together you just simply slide it in you can see it hits up against the side there push it up forward twist it to where you need it so they're together and then just connect that plug there the um quick disconnect and connect that one back up and it's good to go it's pretty strong i thought it was going to be weak but i can certainly sort of hold on to it to get in and out put my weight on it so i'm going to hide that joint in the middle with mirrors so these are the these are 3d printed mirrors that i'm working on at the moment that's going to be covering that gap so you won't see it and there'll be one here too i'm just waiting on plastic that's like a mirror to go in there um they won't be functional in the game they're just there to hide that and to make it look more like an a10 all the rivet detailers with upholstery nails as are these large ones these are really huge upholstery nails that i found that are like 30 millimeters wide so that did the job and it's the right amount too i counted it from photos of the real jet uh same with this here so these rivets continue there that's that's a 3d print all i did was put upholstery nails in it the same way i didn't 3d print these rivet detail in i just use the upholstery nails as always the files for this the files for this and the files for this are all free to download on the website so the way i got over my issues with the casting the shadows on the screen is i just moved the entire cockpit back and i moved the this projector here forward so this projector got moved forward about two inches and then the entire cockpit got slid back a fair distance so this this here used to actually be in line with the screen so now there's a very large gap here you can see these are casting a shadow on the screen um i've got it at the exact at the perfect limit where you can't see that where you're sitting in the cockpit so it's hidden behind the instrument panel and because i've moved it back i have lost a little bit of side visibility there because usually my head would sort of be here so i'd be able to look over a bit more and feel a bit more involved but now my head is sort of not my head's no longer right in the center of the screen it's sort of further back by about a foot all right so here we are in the jet and i'll just throw it around a bit so you can see how the g-meter works the reset button now works so you push that and they reset the needles and then if i bank and give it some negative g's as well and you can see the index has worked when i push the signal i test same on the compass well that brings us to the end of this video thanks for watching if you have any questions hit me up in the comments below um or check out my website at thewardhogproject.com and i'll see you in the next one thanks you

Channel: The Warthog Project

Views: 16,500

Rating: 4.9847765 out of 5

Keywords: dcs

Id: dnPQ-Ee9iDQ

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021